


running like moths to the flame

by llwydion



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Yuuri-centric, ambiguous ending, graphic depictions of injuries, trigger warning: self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 12:30:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10662630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llwydion/pseuds/llwydion
Summary: Yuuri is like fire.He sparks into existence (hours and years of sweaty palms and backs, tears left unshed and tears wept into pillows, bloody feet and torn toenails and bruised knees) and is captivating; like a new-born spark, no one who sees him can take their eyes off him.trigger warnings: graphic depictions of injuries, self-harm





	running like moths to the flame

**Author's Note:**

> Again, repeating for the third time, trigger warnings: graphic depictions of injuries and self-harm.
> 
> title taken from "Ricochet" by Starset
> 
> (also please, if you are self-harming and feel like you can't reach out to anyone, please be careful and know your limits. that's all I ask.)

Yuuri is like fire.

He sparks into existence (hours and years of sweaty palms and backs, tears left unshed and tears wept into pillows, bloody feet and torn toenails and bruised knees) and is captivating; like a new-born spark, no one who sees him can take their eyes off him.

His motivation:

(a young boy and girl are skating on the ice. the boy likes the girl. it’s a naïve, childish crush, but it is puppy love and all love is powerful. the girl likes ice skating and Victor Nikiforov, and naturally so does the boy.

the admiration the boy has for Victor only grows, breathed into existence by a need to be on the same ice as this elfin wonder with the long silver hair and the impossibly blue roses, and so, he skates.

somewhere along the way, the admiration changes. perhaps it is at the same time the hero of Russia sheds his hair and the roses, moving on to fuschia costumes, flashing lights, and a blank, carefully prepared smile. perhaps it is with the arrival of a small dog who refuses to answer to makkachin and only barks when she hears her favorite human call her name, vicchan. or perhaps it was before all of this, perhaps it was the moment when the boy learned of the existence of silver hair and a bright smile and a string of gold medals.)

Everyone he knows believes he wants to skate on the same ice as his idol, Victor Nikiforov. He knows better (or worse).

He flares up, blossoms wonderfully under pressure (and no one sees or understands the dark nights where he succumbs to the pressure and scratches, never slices, because slicing leaves marks that do not disappear but scratching eventually fades, and the next day he appears at the rink a little more tired, a little less cheerful, but they chalk it up to normal sleeplessness) and lights up the ice as he glides by, pale and ethereal, dark-haired and dark-eyed and terrifying in his monochrome beauty.

But all flames need oxygen. For the longest time, he was kindled by a desire to do better, to skate against the living legend, Victor Nikiforov, and a need to not fail, to not disappoint everyone at home (these two things, and these two alone, were his oxygen). His parents, Mari, Vicchan (until she died and then everything else seemed smaller, less significant), the Japanese public, the ISU, Phichit, Celestino. The list only grows longer with each passing year (and the nights that he begins to call the bad nights also grow. some days he falls on the ice, again and again, and his fingers curl and want to scratch so badly that he bites his lip until it bleeds. some days he repeats the same step sequence to the same music and completely, utterly fails, and his arms start tingling. some days he has to excuse himself to the bathroom to relieve the tension in his hands and the itchiness on his arms.

the nights are the reason he wears long sleeves. the marks fade, but every time someone looks at his bare arms, he feels like they know. and they know, those few who have found him, but they don’t understand. they ask, why haven’t you seen a therapist, or, why haven’t you talked to someone? but they don’t understand. none of them do, really.)

He begins to fade as each season draws to a close, eyes a little less alert, mouth drawn into thinner and thinner lines. December, and with it the GFP, is coming. Thankfully, (he says, but never means, because that means he has, once again, failed) he has never had to skate against Nikiforov in something that mattered. Juniors were a thing of the past, where young skaters learned to fall and get up again in competition where people watched like hawks for those with potential and those who would eventually flub.

(he could never stand the looks. they bored into him and through him and he always felt like a piece of glass, fragile and shatterable, and with each stroke of the pen he could feel himself shatter a little more, until finally he was a pile of glass dust and nothing more.)

He competes. He learns of Vicchan’s death. He places sixth.

He is leaving Sochi, and his idol (his oxygen) wonders if he wants a commemorative photo.

There is a time in every person’s life when you wonder whether things were worth it. For some, this happens many times. You wonder if the time you put in, if the hours and days and weeks you spent slaving away at a project, is worthy of the outcome it has been given. You wonder if the thing you spent so much time on was truly worth it if others deem it to be a failure.

Yuuri gets on the plane and feels nothing. (that’s a lie. he feels so much negativity that he wonders if he is truly human, or if he has progressed to being a black hole of negative emotion. but black hole is not the right term, he thinks. it implies a existence on a cosmic level, and he is nothing more than a single speck in the universe.

he feels cold and empty and inhuman and he wonders what they’ll say.

he already knows. and he already knows that he has failed them, once again, and they know too but they cannot and do not understand and they never will.)

Yuuri arrives in Hasetsu and collapses into his bed. He does not dream. (because he lays awake the entire night and tears and scratches and wears a long sleeve shirt the next day.

the flame has been extinguished.)

Then Victor arrives like a breath of fresh air into a musty, dark room.

(or has it?)

Those first few weeks, he feels like he’s flying, like he is weightless and nothing can stop him. He shines even brighter than before; the flame, now fanned with abundant, excess air, roars and reaches upwards in excitement and ecstasy.

Then the competitions begin, and suddenly he has returned to his old self, the one which glided around the ice as a pale and ethereal ghost, the one who accumulated invisible scars like Victor Nikiforov accumulated medals.

(the nights are worse than ever. sometimes he contemplates picking up the razor and slashing, just to see if he’s still human, if bright red welling up against pale skin will convince his traitorous mind.)

Day after day, he climbs out of bed, goes on a morning run with his coach (his coach! his very own idol, Victor Nikiforov, his coach!), consumes sustenance, goes to the rink with his coach to practice until his toes bleed and his sweat is turning into ice, returns home, consumes sustenance, soaks in the hot springs, and sleeps.

Competition weeks are spent in hotel rooms in much the same fashion.

(at some point in this entire process of becoming an entirely new person and at the same time falling apart, he has, unknowing to no one but himself and his coach, fallen in love with his coach. their love is built on push and pull, Victor working to pull everything he has, every ounce of potential, out of his student, and Yuuri working to push everything he has and more to become the skater Victor wants him to be. neither of them realize that this student-coach relationship is slowly changing into something more.

neither of them realize that Victor has become something essential to Yuuri: as surely as the sun rises, as surely as spring will come, Yuuri loves Victor because Victor is essential to Yuuri’s existence.

Victor is the oxygen to Yuuri’s flame.)

Then, alarmingly, impossibly, the GPF looms ahead and he rises beautifully to the challenge. (but no one sees the cracks that, almost imperceptibly at first, form and grow, like delicate fissures in ice that are so small they cannot be seen, yet signal danger far greater than the skater understands.)

And somehow, he is standing on the podium, bearing a silver medal on his chest as his national anthem plays.

(sometimes he wonders if it is worth it, if it was worth the nights he spent doubting himself and everything, if it was worth the multitude of scratches down his arms and body, if it was worth the strained ligaments and torn skin and bloody bruises.)

The only things he sees are the impossibly blue eyes, like those impossibly blue roses all those years ago, smiling at him.

He is so happy he almost forgets to breathe.

(he thinks it was worth it, and that’s all that matters in the end, isn’t it?)

Their pair skate in the GPF marks the beginning of them, of a love that exists beyond all boundaries and descriptions, of a love that is, though imperfect and flawed, all the more powerful because of them. Their love will exist beyond the end of the world, through trials and tribulations, as all flames need oxygen to burn.

(but flames always consume oxygen, and there is no such thing as infinity…)


End file.
